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Address of Pope Francis to the conference
organized by the dicastery for laity, family and life
Synod Hall – Saturday, 18 February 2023
Theme “a call to walk together”
Dear brothers and sisters,
I thank Cardinal Farrell and I greet you, representatives of the Episcopal Commissions for the Laity, leaders of ecclesial associations and movements, officials of the Dicastery and all those present.
You have come here from different countries to reflect on the shared responsibility of pastors and the lay faithful in the Church. The title of your Conference speaks of a “call” to “move forward together”, placing the theme in the broader context of synodality. The path that God is indicating to the Church is precisely that of a more intense and concrete experience of communion and journeying together. He is asking the Church to leave behind ways of acting separately, on parallel tracks that never meet. Clergy separated from laity, consecrated persons separated from clergy and the faithful; the intellectual faith of certain elites separated from the faith of ordinary people; the Roman Curia separated from the particular Churches, bishops separated from priests; young people separated from the elderly, couples and families disengaged from the life of the communities, charismatic movements separated from parishes, and so on. This is the worst temptation at the present time.
The Church still has a long way to go in order to live as one body, as one true people united by the same faith in Christ the Savior, animated by the same Spirit of holiness and directed to the same mission of proclaiming the merciful love of God our Father.
This last aspect is crucial: a people united in mission.
This is the insight that we must always cherish: the Church is the faithful holy People of God, as Lumen Gentium affirms in nos. 8 (Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, as an entity with visible delineation through which He communicated truth and grace to all) and 12 (The holy people of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office; it spreads abroad a living witness to Him, especially by means of a life of faith and charity and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the tribute of lips which give praise to His name. The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief.).
The Church is neither populist nor elitist, but the faithful holy People of God.
We cannot learn this theoretically, but only through lived experience. Only then can we try to explain it, as best we can; but if we do not live it, we cannot explain it.
A people united in mission.
Synodality has its origin and end in mission: it is born of mission and it is directed to mission.
Let us think of the first days, when Jesus sent the Apostles and they all returned happy, because the demons “fled from them”: it was the mission that created this sense of the Church.
Sharing in the mission brings pastors and lay people closer together. It builds a unity of purpose, manifests the complementarity of the different charisms and thus awakens in all the desire to go forward together.
We see this in Jesus himself, who from the beginning surrounded himself with a group of disciples, men and women, and, with whom He carried out his public ministry. Never alone.
When he sent the Twelve to announce the Kingdom of God, he sent them “two by two”.
We see the same thing in St. Paul, who always proclaimed the Gospel with co-workers, including lay people and married couples. Not alone. This has been the case in times of great renewal and missionary outreach in the history of the Church: pastors and faithful together. Not isolated individuals, but an evangelizing people,, the faithful and holy People of God!
I know that you have also discussed the formation of the laity, which is indispensable for the exercise of shared responsibility. Here too, I would like to emphasise that this formation must be missionary and not merely theoretical, otherwise it will become ideological. And this is a terrible scourge. Ideology in the Church is like a plague. To avoid this, formation must be missionary, not academic, not limited to theoretical ideas, but practical.
It must come from hearing the kerygma, it must be nurtured by the word of God and the sacraments, it must help people to grow in discernment, as individuals and in community, and engage them from the beginning in the apostolate and in various forms of witness, however simple, which can lead to closeness to others.
The apostolate of the lay faithful is above all that of witness!
The witness of one’s own experience and history, the witness of prayer, the witness of serving to the needy, the witness of closeness to the poor and the forgotten, and the witness of welcome, especially on the part of families. This is the proper formation for mission: going out to others, learning “on the ground”. At the same time, it is an effective means of spiritual growth.
From the beginning, I have said that “I dream of a missionary Church” (Evangelii Gaudium, 27 to 32). This brings to mind an image from the Book of Revelation, when Jesus says: “I stand at the door and knock; if you open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you” (Rev 3:20).
The drama of the Church today is that Jesus continues to knock at the door, but from the inside, so that we will let him out! Often we end up being an “prisoner” Church, which does not let the Lord out, which keeps him as “its own”, whereas the Lord came for the mission and wants us to be missionaries.
It is in this perspective that we can properly approach the question of the co-responsibility of the laity in the Church. The need to strengthen the role of the laity is not based on some theological novelty, or on the shortage of priests, much less on the desire to make up for past neglect.
Rather, it is based on a correct vision of the Church as the People of God, of which the laity, together with the ordained ministers, area full part. The ordained ministers, then, are not masters, but servants: pastors, not masters.
This means recovering an integral ecclesiology, like that of the first centuries, when everything was unified by membership in Christ and by supernatural communion with him and with our brothers and sisters.
It means leaving behind a sociological vision that distinguishes classes and social ranks, based ultimately on the “power” assigned to each category. The emphasis must be on unity, not on separation or distinction. The lay person is more than a “non-cleric” or a “non-religious”; he or she must be considered as a baptized person, a member of the holy People of God, because this is the sacrament that opens all doors.
In the New Testament, the word “lay” does not appear; we hear of “believers”, “disciples”, “brothers” and “saints”, terms that apply to everyone: lay faithful and ordained ministers alike, the People of God on a journey together.
In this one People of God, which is the Church, the fundamental element is our belonging to Christ. In the moving accounts of the Acts of the early martyrs, we often find a simple profession of faith: “I am a Christian”, they would say, “and therefore I cannot sacrifice to idols”.
These were the words, for example, spoken by Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, and by Justin and his companions, laypersons. These martyrs did not say: “I am a bishop”, or “I am a layperson” – “I am from Catholic Action, I am from that Marian Congregation, I am a member of the Focolare Movement”. No, they said simply: “I am a Christian”.
Even today too, in a world that is increasingly secularized, what truly distinguishes us as the People of God is our faith in Christ, not our state of life considered in itself.
We are the baptized; we are Christians; we are the disciples of Jesus.
Everything else is secondary. “But, Father, also being a priest?” – “Yes, that too is secondary” – “And what about a bishop?” – “Yes, that is secondary” – “Even a Cardinal?” – “That too is secondary”.
Our common belonging to Christ makes us all brothers and sisters. As the Second Vatican Council states, “the lay faithful by divine condescension have Christ as their brother. They also have as their brothers those who, called to the sacred ministry…. exercise the office of pastors in the family of God” (Lumen Gentium, 32). Brothers and sisters with Christ, and brothers and sisters with priests, fraternity with all.
In this unified vision of the Church, in which we are first and foremost baptized Christians, the lay faithful live in the world and at the same time belong to the faithful people of God.
The Puebla Document expresses this well: laity are men and women “of the Church in the heart of the world”, and men and woman “of the world in the heart of the Church”.
It is true that the lay faithful are called to live their mission primarily in the midst of the secular realities in which they are immersed daily. This does not mean, however, that they do not also have abilities, charisms and competence to contribute to the life of the Church: in liturgical worship, in catechesis and education, in the structures of government, in the administration of goods, in the planning and implementation of pastoral projects, etcetera. For this reason, pastors must be trained from their seminary days to work with the laity so that communion, as a lived experience, is reflected in their activity as something natural, not extraordinary and occasional. One of the worst things a pastor can do is to forget the people from whom he comes, to lack that memory. We can address to him that much-repeated word from the Bible: “Remember”. “Remember where you were taken from, the flock from which you were taken in order to return and serve it, remember your roots” (cf. 2 Tim, 1).
This experience of shared responsibility between laity and pastors will help to overcome dichotomies, fears and mutual distrust. Now is the time for pastors and laity to move forward together, in every area of the Church’s life and in every part of the world! The laity are not “guests” in the Church; it is their home and they are called to care for it as such.
The lay faithful, especially women, must be better appreciated for the abilities and the human and spiritual gifts they bring to the life of parishes and dioceses. They can contribute to the proclamation of the Gospel with their “everyday” language, through various forms of preaching. hey can collaborate with priests in the formation of children and young people, in helping engaged couples prepare for marriage, and in accompanying couples in married and family life. They should always be consulted when new pastoral initiatives are planned at all levels, local, national and universal. They should be given a voice in the pastoral councils of the particular Churches and should be present in diocesan offices. hey can help in the spiritual direction of other laity and contribute to the formation of seminarians and religious. I once heard a question: “Father, can a lay person be a spiritual director? It is indeed a lay charism! A spiritual director can be a priest, but the charism is not priestly as such; spiritual direction, if the Lord gives you the spiritual ability, is a lay charism. Together with their pastors, the lay faithful must bring Christian witness to secular life: to the world of work, culture, politics, art and social communications.
We could put it this way: laity and pastors together in the Church, laypersons and pastors together in the world.
- I am reminded of the last pages of Henri de Lubac’s book, Méditation sur l’Église (A meditation on the Church). There, he explains that the worst thing that can happen to the Church is the spiritual worldliness that goes by the name of clericalism, which “would be infinitely more disastrous than any mere moral worldliness”. If you have time, read those last three or four pages of de Lubac’s Méditation sur l’Église. Quoting various authors, he tries to show that clericalism is the ugliest thing that can happen to the Church, worse even than the times of the papal mistresses. Clericalism must be “chased away”. A priest or a bishop who falls into this attitude does great harm to the Church. But it is a contagious disease: for the clericalized laity are a worse plague in the Church even than priests or bishops who have fallen into clericalism. Please, remember that laity are laity.
Dear friends, with these few remarks, I have tried to point out an ideal, an inspiration to help us move forward. How I wish that all of us could cherish in our minds and hearts this beautiful vision of the Church! A Church that is missionary, where all join forces and walk together to proclaim the Gospel. A Church in which what unites us is our baptism as Christians, our belonging to Jesus. A Church characterized by fraternity between the lay faithful and the pastors, since all work side by side every day in every area of pastoral life, because they are all baptized.
I encourage you to promote in your Churches all that you have received in these days, in order to continue together the renewal of the Church and her missionary conversion. From my heart I bless all of you and your loved ones, and I ask you, please, to pray for me. Thank you very much.
